Saturday, April 27, 2013
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
Over the last 75 days I've thought of a few things or tried to do some acts which I felt were me. I gave directions, let the tall guy next to me on my flight to the Hawkes Bay have the aisle, but all of them felt minor or little. I tried to help the guy in front of me who couldn't pay for the train because someone jammed the coin slot on the ticket machine, but he wouldn't take my $5 note to pay.
Much information, guidance and inspiration for all actions and items on on my 30 Before 30 list has come from the internet. When I saw an article about a random act of kindness by giving flowers I knew it was me.
I love flowers. And particularly getting them. Looking at them brightens my day and makes my soul smile. I feel special and loved and I realized to be able to give that feeling would be great.
I knew that my item for helping a stranger had to be to buy them flowers. I know it's not financial help and certainly won't change their lives, but making someone feel good helps them. It's the little things I think.
So, I spent my lunch hour on my birthday traveling to Auckland hospital. Armed with some bright pink gerbera daisies and the help of a volunteer I had the flowers go to someone who needed some brightness. The weather in Auckland this week has been cold, grey and rainy so I'm hoping these flowers brought a smile and some cheer to someone who needed it.
For those in the US, I also found this charity, Random Acts of Flowers (http://www.randomactsofflowers.org) who does this on a regular basis if you want to support this idea.
-Choose a mentor who is local or nearby, if possible, and ideally someone in your organization.
-Find a mentor who has a good balance of similarities and differences compared to your strengths and weaknesses.
-Having a mentor doesn’t have to be a formal arrangement.
Monday, April 15, 2013
She made these books covering her family history and then a separate one for my brother and I also covering our Dad's family history.
Geneology has always kinda interested me. So I thought i'd try to take it a step further. Her books only went back to my great (or in some cases) great great grandparents. I want more in my history, so armed with her Ancestry.com membership and my internet stealth skills I started this project and am pleased to say I managed to get every line back at least 1 generation (and sometimes more) than she did.
Things I've learned while doing this project.
1. I'm related to people from England, Scotland, Ireland (never knew this one!), Canada (never knew this one!), Poland and the Czech Republic (I have a totally new scope for considering myself "a bohemian"!).
2. I got in touch with my Dad's cousin who I have not seen in probably 28 years through randomly finding her also doing geneology research online.
3. I may not actually be related to James Monroe. While growing up one of our fun family facts has always been that we are related to James Monroe the 5th president of the US. While I can make the connections back to the Monroes : George Monroe (my great, great, great grandfather who fought in the Civil War and was in-prisoned several times) and to Corporal Joe Monroe who fought in the American Revolutionary war in in the 1770's his 80's(!) and even all the way back to the first Monroe in the US in my family (William Monroe, who was deported to the US in 1652 for punishment for fighting for the king of England against the Scottish), yet I still can't find the connection to James Monroe. Most of my Monroe family comes from Massachusetts and New Hampshire At least not a direct connection.
And so here is my family tree
Sunday, April 14, 2013
Anyways the high tea was lovely. Six girls went with me to the Cornwall Park restaurant. We picked a tea from a selection of about dozen. They had a great variety of savories, scones (with cream and jam) and lovely little pastries. It was great.
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
And thus the idea of making my own ball of yarn was made. Little did I know she would follow through and one day her husband Aaron shows up with a garbage bag of wool straight from the sheep.
Going from wool to yarn isn't an easy process. Here's what I had to do:
1. sort the wool, removing any that was unusable.
2. Wash the wool, 3 times to remove any dirt and "organic" matter as they call it.
3. Card the wool. Rather than spending money on expensive carders I bought 2 dog brushes and used them to brush the wool out. I used twizers to pull out grass and anything remaining.
4. Spin the wool. I spent ages looking at spinning wheels on trade me. I initially didn't want to get one that was too expensive given this is a new hobby. I bought one finally for $40 NZD. Which wasn't great. Thankfully my father in law Peter saw me struggling and upgraded me to a used Ashford which is one of the best brands. It's a double treadle which has made spinning quite easy.
5. Ply the wool. After spinning 2 bobbins of skinny single ply thread I plyed them together.
6. Make a skein. I then had to get the yarn
From my bobbin into a group. Matt helped make me a niddy noddy to do this
7. And finally I had to set the twist in the yarn by steaming the wool
It's a cool new hobby and I look forward to all the cool new projects I can make with my new yarn.
Monday, April 8, 2013
We did two dives. The first was at Brady's corner (16m) and the second was at Middle Arch (19m). We saw amazing sea life including eels, rays, scorpion fish, nudibranches, banded coral fish, snapper, kingfish and more. We even also went up into a cave with an air pocket 10m below the surface.
Definitely a great experience.